Author: jennyf74

Date for the diary – Friday 20th April, meeting at 12.30pm at the Outdoor Classroom site.  Come and have a look at identifying the trees and plants on our doorstep.

As the local nursery was closed today it felt a bit like a Noodles reunion as some of the first groups of children revisited for a play in the mud.

Lovely to see the friendships forged at Forest school have continued into the next setting – for the mums too! Lovely to see you all today.

All we needed was some buckets and spades for most as the site is still pretty water logged.  Mud castles, painting and boat making plus some seed bombs and bug hotel building.

After Easter Nature Noodles will be celebrating it’s 2nd Birthday!

A lovely way to spend a sunny Monday!  For this Home Ed Session I brought some filter paper for chromatography experiments and filtering.  A couple of spades and a LOT of digging made a nice big hole (which we back-filled) to look at soil colour changed, dig for clay and test ph levels.

There was tree climbing, exploring, making elder bubble pipes and willow wands finishing up with some soup and popcorn.

Looking forward to the next session already!

Thursday Forest School 6 Week Block: 9.45-11.45am, 19th April – 24th May.

Monday Home Ed Sessions:                 10am-1pm, 23rd April & 14th May

Mighty Girls & Boys Saturday Sessions:    10-12pm & 2-4pm, 28th April & 19th May

Spaces are limited on all sessions.  Please contact me directly for any further information and for booking on.

Many thanks 🍃🌿🍃

Trying to make Spring sunshine potions … lots of mixing and squirting.  Using food colouring in the dispensers and pipettes to suck the water up … with a good dollop of mud too!

Lots of water still on site so splashing around a must, sticks collected and potato peelers out for the younger children to try some whittling (trying balsa wood next week).  One to one tool work with a pen knife for the older children.

I left out robust mirrors and some pots and elastic bands to see what anyone could come up with and the tins and tap sticks were popular.  Finishing off for some the chance to have a go with the fire steel … needing to make a little warmth for our hands.

Some wands were made and decorated with wool hoping some Spring spells were  made … let’s hope they do their magic! ✨✨

Determined not to have to rearrange this session again, we went ahead but brought with us plenty of blankets and firewood!

Kingsthorpe Library had kindly lent me storysacks which had placed throughout the site … we went on a Bear Hunt to find them but instead of making smaller dens throughout the site decided to make one big den as it was still so chilly.

We read Owl Babies then ran around to keep warm coming back to The Gruffalo and then setting off to make a house for a mouse.

We coloured story stones and made mud porridge for the Three Bears coming together round the fire to read the Hungry Caterpillar.

A lovely session … will definitely run again in the warmer months …

The sun came out, not just because it was my birthday Iam sure!  Still plenty of water on site so fun was had splashing around and using the buckets and spades.    It was important to encourage the use of Puddle sticks so that the children could gauge how deep the water was.

We had scavenger bags and Go Find It! cards to collect materials to make a boat.  Mostly we collected bark and used a palm drill to insert sticks for sails.

The den building kit was out and materials for simple rain shakers – tho the rain held off!

Finishing up with a fire and cake!

The weather may have been warmer but being wet through is no fun either, we had changes of clothes and plenty of towels to make sure that no one got too uncomfortable.

This Saturday 17th March will be the stories in the trees session postponed from last weekend.  Judging by the forecast I can’t guarantee it will be any drier but we can hope!

There will be a group story and then options to go and choose a tree story, build send to snuggle in and have a story and some role play possibilities.

The session will be 12.30-2.30pm and spaces are limited so please book on!

£3.00 per family (up to 2 children then 50p per extra child).

Not as warm as we hoped it was going to be … BUT we had lots of fun splashing around, playing with dinosaurs, some measuring, music with tap sticks and tin cans, willow bubble wands, some woodwork and a few tee pees!  Phew!

It was a dynamic session with lots going on – different ages and interests.  Great to see the older children accessing the whole of the site and moving around and away from main camp.  It was a bit windy and we stayed away from the willow trees making our fire in a more sheltered area. Lighting the fire was tricky as it was a bit wet but we managed to cook up some marshmallows and get warm with a hot chocolate!